Featured Article
“The Hummingbird: An Augury from the Gods”
By Melanie A. Rein
On June 6, 2018, while on holiday on Corfu, I had a dream:
E (a family member) comes to see me, or I suggest he comes for lunch, as H, his wife, is away. He arrives, but there is some confusion about whether he wanted to come over or go to see a friend. My sister might also be there. E has a car accident on the way to see me. He is very shaken. I give him a hug and he pats me on the bottom as if he has forgotten who I am.
I am then at the front door, possibly with R, my husband, behind me. There are a number of birds flying around. A hummingbird flies up to me. Hovering, it puts its beak on or into my forehead as if drinking nectar from a flower. I am surprised.
A few hours later, I awoke bewildered from a rest I had taken following my morning Taiji practice, with no memory of where I was and with severe chest pain. I was rushed to the local hospital, where I was diagnosed with a rare heart condition. Once back in the UK, the diagnosis was confirmed, along with an atypical form of transient global amnesia. Since then, a number of health conditions have emerged, and I am now disabled with ongoing health issues. I continue to practice as an analytical psychologist.
Sometime later, after my dream of the hummingbird, I came across the following:
The Greek word for a bird, ornis or oionos, was also the word for an omen. Birds were thought of as “signs.” They were the principal agents through which the gods revealed their will to humans, so they could reasonably describe themselves as the gods’ messengers and privileged intermediaries, who should be consulted about future plans and important decisions. (Mynott 2018, 249)
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Writing this paper has been hugely problematic, for, like a synchronicity, my experience of life since developing my heart condition is that it is occurring “outside” of diachronic time: that is, outside our usual sense of time “moving forward.” The many hospitalizations, the experiences in hospital with fellow patients, my relationships with others who have the same heart condition as me, my own “recoveries”—which is a term that misses the subtly nuanced experience of living with chronic illness and disability1—and the ongoing review of my life in relation to others, all exist outside of “normal” time experience. It was only after reading Ed Yong’s An Immense World, that my experience of illness, including my dream outlined at the beginning of the paper, emerged as a cluster of events profoundly connecting me to the natural world and situating me within it: that is, in the world of instinct and of life and death. In this experience, the hummingbird, and birds in general, have been central.